Dispatches

Nine-Eleven

The 25th Anniversary Commemoration Manhatten New York

12 September 2026

I

Cowards tend to draw attention to themselves. Usually with false statements, false claims of achievement, and sometimes statements that are outlandish, brazen.

Watching from the United Kingdom yesterday (September 11, 2026) the moving ceremony at Ground Zero New York Manhattan, I saw all of the living former United States Presidents and their First Ladies in attendance.

That’s odd, I thought, ‘Where is POTUS? Why is VPOTUS there?’

Initially, I thought it might be a case of camera angle and that I would very shortly see the 47th.

Then the ticker-tape appeared across the bottom of the BBC News Channel screen! POTUS is at the Arlington Memorial Ceremony.

My instant thought, and I mean instant, was…

“The man’s a coward. He would be mentally crushed standing in the presence of all the living former presidents.”

— K Th W

II

But that is not the reason why I have not published anything about Nine-Eleven on my website this year. Normally, I always do. But these are not normal times.

When POTUS disgraced himself as he ‘recollected’, at a podium, how two firemen had lifted him from the rubble, I thought to myself… ‘Now, go easy. This is an old man rambling. Putting himself into situations that he was not in and living in present time what he would like to have thought would have happened. You’ve dealt with frontal lobe memory loss countless times. He’ll be unaware. Cognitive decline.’

That would not have stopped me from writing.

No. It was watching yesterday, here in Britain, on September 11th, a superb documentary about that ferocious attack on the USA in 2001 being narrated through the principal firefighter who had been in command of the first responders on that terrifying day.

The producers of the documentary played a recording apparently of Donald Trump telephoning in to a news outlet on 9/11 even as the Attack was still underway, and reminding them that as the Twin Towers had just come down that he was now the owner of the tallest building in Manhattan, New York.

III

I remember where I was – all of us who lived at that time, do – and I recall our receptionist giving all of us regular updates from her husband who was watching events unfold from their home across town, as we went about our business running a legal practice in Folkestone, Kent on the south-east coast.

As each update came in, we could only just about imagine what was actually going on. I specifically remember (because I had completed 17 years commissioned service in the RAF VR) the receptionist looking at me - a lady who had been a steward on board the Herald of Free Enterprise when it sank without warning in March 1987, and whispering something like ‘Ken, and now an aircraft has hit the Pentagon!’

IV

In 2015-2016 my many American friends were hard pressed - and insistent - to explain to me upon the election of their 45th president, that my alarm was completely unfounded. I remember the transatlantic telephone calls. I remember the frustration. There was no meeting of the minds. No common ground.

The man left a discredited presidency.

A state of normality begins to return.

The wider world saw it as a most unfortunate blip along the timeline.

In this country we regarded the January 6, 2021 Capitol Insurrection as absolute proof in just how dangerous that man had been, and just how close America had come to total breakdown. Thankfully, he was now removed.

The man became a convicted felon.

Then there were rumblings. Surely, the American People would not bring a convicted felon back to the White House?!?!?

The rest is history.

V

Will America survive?

Yes, I believe it will.

A very different America in a very different world, and with America itself in a very different position to that of its former allies. What I loosely term ‘the three verys’.

The other day, I remarked that it might take at least ten years for the USA to recover. I was very quickly corrected.

“No, you are looking at least at a generation and possibly longer.”

— K Th W

VI

We live in the most dangerous times since the end of the Second World War.

2026 even surpasses the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 which I well remember. As a nine-year-old, I was petrified.

Now, at 73 I am not petrified.

I am reconciled to the irreparable damage that the United States of America has - through the hands of one man and his cohorts - wrought upon the world. And this must lie at the feet of the American electorate that somehow believed that a reality TV show called The Apprentice was proof that here was a man who would make America great again because he had all of the presidential credentials.

The free world shall continue and thrive, but it will do so in the hands of other people. The European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth of Nations will ensure that NATO continues, and that we will never again allow the USA to hold the rudder.

VII

This morning, the BBC has just shown the 47th getting the people in the stadium he is addressing – and which is not a full stadium – to raise their hands and take some absolutely ridiculous ‘oath of allegiance’. It is pure Trumpton toy town. That’s the funny side of it. The much darker, sinister side is that Adolf Hitler required an oath of allegiance to him.

Listening to the many superb independent American journalists, their message to their audiences is clear. In paraphrase it goes something like this…

“We, the American people have only ourselves to blame for the situation in which we now find ourselves. We cannot presume that our former allies who all came to our rescue on September 11, 2001 and even invoked NATO Article Five for the first time and then stood by us, to automatically do so again. Our allies went to war with us, fought once again alongside us and died alongside us.”

— K Th W

VIII

The USS Abraham Lincoln was seen last week for the first time as it entered port. Rusting. If it looks like that on the outside, what on earth does it look like on the inside? What on earth have all the sailors, marines and air personnel been put through in this unwarranted deployment? How has the US Secretary of Defense allowed this to happen? These are the global questions awaiting America’s reply.

The USS Lincoln is an outward manifestation of the rot that is eating the United States of America from the inside out.

But let this be temporary. BUT, only the American Electorate can resolve this.

Reverse the situation in the Midterms.

Then have the courage to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove a man from office who is no longer mentally capable of carrying out the duties and responsibilities as head of state.

Renew Congress. Give life again to Congress.

The terrible situation now facing American Citizens, is the bewilderment by every nation in the world of the spectacle of a very poorly Senator being wheeled into the Senate. This speaks volumes. It is also very sad. It has to stop.

Seize the day, America, while you still have time.

*This is the America I have always believed in. K Th W*
*‘Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, by Joe Rosenthal’. NAID : 520748*
*By Courtesy of THE NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM - NEW ORLEANS*

IX

I was aged 8-9 years when I first saw this on the newsreels (c 1961-1962) and I was awestruck. Here was visually what our parents emphasised to my sisters and me ~ the price paid for the freedom we enjoyed. It was a poignant moment, for it helped me to really quantify the price paid by Mum’s brother and Dad’s brother in the skies over Nazi Germany in 1945 and 1943 respectively.